


Your Biggest Mistake

by the_huffster



Series: Snapshots [1]
Category: Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: A twisted sort of fate, Brief mentions of child abuse, Canon Typical Violence, Electroshock briefly mentions, F/M, Gen, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-20 12:57:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8249899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_huffster/pseuds/the_huffster
Summary: "She wasn’t even there and she had, yet again, managed to change the rules on him. She wasn’t supposed to be the one that got under his skin; no one should have been able to get under his skin."Before the chemicals had altered him, the Joker lived through many different versions of himself. And during one of those versions he encounters a hidden force of nature that barrels her way back into his life after he's reborn, and he can't seem to shake her.





	

In a past life, he hadn’t been as bad as everyone thought he had been. He had still been a criminal, but he was only doing it until he could start over. However, being nothing more than a street punk hadn’t earned him much. He was only able to get enough to scrape by until the next shake down or mugging.

The details were hazy now

( _All that electroshock was to thank for that_ )

but by the time he was nineteen, he had partnered up with a career criminal- or as career as one could get in Brooklyn. They didn’t do anything big; just rob a few small time banks and stores. The older of the duo, Barry Something-or-another,

( _At least he was pretty sure the man’s name was Barry_ )

was only looking for jobs that would let him provide for his family, although it didn’t take long before they were planning a bigger job.

And then suddenly he was spending time at Barry’s apartment, much to the wife’s irritation. He didn’t get why the wife was so upset, he came over in the evening and brought his own food to snack on.

“How much longer is he gonna be comin’ over?”

“The Kid’s helpin’ me plan a job that’s gonna get us by for a while.”

He normally took to messing with his lucky deck of cards or his switchblade whenever Barry and the wife argued about him. The wife’s problem seemed to be that Barry had invited a stranger to their home; that he could kill both of them and their kids, although he had never met the kids and wasn’t rushing to do so.

“If I wanted to kill ya, I would’ve done it by now.”

He flashed the wife a smile, and put an end to that conversation.

It was a week later when he showed up the apartment with a stuffed dog in one hand. He couldn’t help but laugh at the confused look on Barry’s face.

“Ya mentioned how your daughter wanted a puppy for her birthday.”

He walked into the apartments and set the plush dog on the small kitchen table. While he had never met the kids, he had heard about them. And he knew how much Barry loved them and how much Barry hated that he couldn’t give them what they asked for. 

Before he could get Barry to pick up the toy, a little voice sounded from the corner by the living room. A girl with light brown hair stood at the corner, her eyes wide as she looked from the stuffed dog to the two men in the kitchen. Barry introduced him as “the Kid”, but in his current life he couldn’t remember what the girl’s name had been.

He picked up the stuffed dog and kneeled down when she walked towards him. He held out the toy and smiled.

“I heard you wanted a puppy, so I hope this one will be okay for now.”

The girl let out a small squeal as she took the plush. Before he could stand up, the girl threw herself at him and gave him a big hug. Barry made a sound that seemed like he was fighting back a laugh.

( _Probably at how uncomfortable he had looked_ )

The girl stepped back and thanked him before running off, calling out a name that must have belonged to her brother.

From that point, the two kids became a fixed point during the evenings he was over to plan the “big plan”. The girl usually laughed at his jokes and her brother took an interest in what he was doing with Barry. Besides that, the only other interaction he had with the kids was whenever Barry and the wife fought about what was going on.

It was during those moments that he’d sit on the living room floor to entertain the 8 year old and 5 year old

( _It was funny how he could remember the ages but not the names_ )

until the fights were over.

The kids took to calling him “Ace” due to the tattoo on the side of his neck. He didn’t care what he was called, as long as no one knew his name; if no one knew his name, then he couldn’t be traced back to the life he was desperately trying to escape.

He found he didn’t mind having to entertain the kids from time to time.

( _After all, in this life he wasn’t the murderous, unfeeling psychopath the city believed he had been_ )

There was a distant memory of a little version of him being beat and ignored, one of parents who didn’t care if he lived or died. He was pretty sure that his mother never even noticed when he had snapped and was taken away to get help. A time when all he knew was violence and arguing and the noise in his head that drove him to scare everyone around him.

( _But that was a whole other past life that he had left behind when he was a teenager_ )

He couldn’t remember a single detail about the “big plan”, but he could recall the afterwards. He had been given a bigger cut and made his way to Gotham.

He had recreated himself and found a way to seem normal.

( _Boring_ )

He had even gotten a real job at a chemical factory and no longer went by “the Kid” or “Ace”. He started going to the gym and taking night classes

( _Not that he needed to, but bettering his education looked good at the job_ )

to keep himself busy.

( _To ignore the noise in his head and pretend he was like everyone else_ )

Eventually he had made something of himself. He had gotten married and even had a kid of his own on the way. Things were starting to look up for him- after 24 years of a living hell; he was getting the life he had hoped for. A good career, a wife, a baby, he was even looking into buying a house.

( _God, he was so boring. And a liar_ )

Then he had been fired, money grew tight, and he decided to make money off of his humor. Only he wasn’t as funny anymore,

( _But was he really ever funny in that life?_ )

no one got his twisted sense of humor. Everything was falling apart and he had no idea how to stop it.

He was finding it harder and harder to continue being the good

( _Pathetic_ )

man he had become. It was also getting harder to keep Jeannie from finding out he was only putting on an act; that deep down

( _Just under the surface_ )

he was no better than the lunatics that ran around Gotham.

She still loved him, she assured him. But he could see that she was loosing hope in him. The baby’s due date was closing in on him and he was barely providing anything, so he fell back. He may have been twenty-four, but he was still a no good street punk.

He went back to mugging to earn fast cash, and somehow a local gang heard about him. Then it was back to holding up mom and pop shops, and a few small banks. But it wasn’t enough to support his family. It was enough, however, to cat the city’s attention, and that was all thanks to him. The mask he wore on the jobs stood out from the others, and had earned them the name of the Red Hood Gang.

He started getting violent whenever they were doing a job, and it was becoming near impossible to keep up the act of a hard working citizen around Jeannie. He was reverting back to a version of himself that he fought hard to kill.

( _And he had found that he liked reverting_ )

Then the gang was planning to pull off the job that would give him the money he needed to provide for his family.

( _Now he couldn’t remember if it was the chemical factory they were robbing or the building on the other side of it_ )

Details blurred together but he ended up calling a number he hadn’t called in years the night before the plan.

Somehow through the mess that he was

( _Again, pathetic_ )

he had managed to say he wanted to tell Barry that he was sorry, that despite everything he had fallen back on old ways; that he just wanted to tell someone goodbye. The voice on the other end, Barry’s daughter, asked him what had happened.

So he told her how he had rebuilt his life, only for a freak accident to take his pregnant wife from him.

“I tried so hard to be a good man, and for what?”

He ended the phone call

( _His sob story_ )

by saying that no matter what, this was the end to his joke of a life. He said goodbye and hung up.

The gang followed through on their plan, but something had gone wrong

( _No amount of planning would make up for the fact that he had been useless and a failure_ ) 

and suddenly he was running from The Batman.

The in between didn’t matter, all that mattered was he had jumped

( _Not only pathetic, but a coward too_ )

over the railing into the chemicals below. And Batman had let it happen.

( _Or did Bats try to save him and his grip slipped? Or perhaps the flying rodent threw him into the vat?_ )

There had been pain, so much pain. Not just physically, but mentally as well. He felt like he was dying a million different ways while memories resurfaced and disappeared. He was on fire, inside and out, and yet he was being pricked by millions of needles.

He would swear the chemicals ripped him apart and put him back together as the version he had been fighting against.

( _Why would anyone not want to be their true self?_ )

He laughed while the liquid rebuilt him.

( _No, he definitely didn’t laugh. That was all in his head_ )

Eventually, he resurfaced and he felt 

( _Free, powerful_ )

different. He didn’t need to see himself to know he had changed, the laughter as he coughed up the chemicals told him that. One thing he knew for certain was that his eyes were open.

His life had been building to this moment, and it was funny. He tried so hard to fit in and make sense of everything, but there was no point. It was just one big joke. There was nothing left for him as the man he had been before this rebirth, and he preferred it that way. Nothing could link him to the loser he was before, and nothing could ever make him that weak again.

Over the next ten years, he built his empire and legacy until he was the most feared man in Gotham. Even when he was in Arkham, he was still the King of Gotham. His one mistake was getting the tattoo from his past life touched up, because it didn’t take long before Bats recognized him as the Red Hood.

( _Now that was a stupid name_ )

But it didn’t matter since Basty didn’t know who he had been before. Of course, he wasn’t that man anymore; he was the Clown Prince of Crime now. The only thing anyone knew about him was what he wanted them to know.

And then he had a new doctor assigned to him and something was familiar about her. But before he could figure it out, she had set him up for more electroshock- no doubt a carry over from his previous doctor. After a few months,

( _And long after the god damn electroshock_ )

he figured she had been caught up in one of the many games he had played on the city.

It hadn’t taken long for him to look forward to his sessions with his blonde doctor; there was just something about her that intrigued him. She was something new for him to play with and he decided to see how long it took to break her. But halfway through his little game, he changed tactics and wanted to see if he could get under her skin.

( _That’s where he went wrong_ )

Months later she changed the rules on him; she called him “Ace” and it stirred memories he had thought long gone. He had chalked it up to a general name she had given him, but she kept pushing for a reaction despite the promise of murder in his cold blue eyes. The young

( _Foolish_ )

doctor mentioned the tattoo on his neck, and poked further for some type of sign from a man long dead. And finally he took the bait, curious to see what all she knew.

“My dad called you ‘the Kid’, and my brother and I called you ‘Ace’. You got me a plush dog when I wanted a puppy for my birthday.”

“There wasn’t a blonde kid in that apartment.”

He wanted to smack the triumphant grin that had spread on her face.

“I’m not a natural blonde,”

He had quickly adapted to the rule change, finding a whole new way to reel her in. It had been slow but the day she let her real accent through

( _It reminded him of a time when he had put on an act for society_ )

had told him he was making progress. They grew closer, closer than a doctor and patient should; and while he convinced himself getting her on his side was a means to an end, a long forgotten voice had said differently.

It had been easy to get her to see him as the victim, especially when a few guards had paid him a special visit to beat him bloody. From there on out things had worked so perfectly, she hadn’t even tried to inform Dr. Arkham that he had asked her for a machine gun or any of the plan he had dragged her into.

After a year

( _And a rain of gunfire and so much violence and death_ )

he was on his way out Arkham Asylum, leaving his naïve

( _Beautiful, he could admit that_ )

doctor

( _His own personal harlequin_ )

on the electroshock table she had sent him to for weeks during their first

( _Technically second_ )

meeting, her own brain something close to pudding. And if he was lucky, the memories she lost were of him.

He had seen the curious look in Frost’s eyes when he had let her live,

( _Truth be told, he was curious about that himself. Even to this day_ )

but he hadn’t questioned it. He added it up to the slight connection she held to his past, and that had been taken care of with the many

( _Not enough_ )

shocks of electricity through her body.

He had laid low after the breakout, not looking to be sent back when he had just gotten back. His empire had remained in tact during the year, minus a few areas lost and some rather ballsy soon to be ex-business partners. But all of that would easily be taken care of once the heat died down.

Just when he made his grand entrance to remind Gotham’s Underworld that he was still in charge, his surprisingly stubborn Dr. Harleen Quinzel 

( _Harley Quinn. She had always been Harley, even back then_ )

had chased him down.

Again, the details of the in between didn’t matter. What mattered was that she wanted to know what happened to the guy

( _The mistake, the unwanted freak, the runaway, the street punk, the loser, the pathetic being, the liar… the list could go on for all the different versions of him there had been in his past life_ )

that had worked with her dad and entertained her and her brother. So he had decided to show her. He had taken her to Ace Chemicals

( _The irony had not been lost on either of them_ )

and he had shown her. She was so wrapped up in him and he was so far under her skin that she hadn’t noticed what his motive was. Or if she did know, she hadn’t cared. It had been a shame, really; she was willing to do anything for him but she had been the one stupid enough to waste the rare gift he had given her of walking away with her still breathing. But she still remembered her past and remembered a version of him before he was the Joker,

( _But then again, he had always been the Joker. He had just been fighting it for most of his life_ )

and that was a liability to him.

She stepped off the platform, and he had to admire at how different her death would be from his. She had willingly gone to her death with no sign of fear while he had been filled with nothing but fear

( _Because he was a fucking coward of a man before his rebirth_ )

when he jumped into the chemicals below. When she went under the liquid, he turned to leave. After all, he had accomplished what he had gone there to do. No more Harleen Quinzel, no more ties to his past, no more liabilities, 

( _Weaknesses_ )

no more problems.

And then he felt it; the twinge in his heart, the twist of his gut. No, no, no, not this time; he was not that man and he should not be having those reactions. She wasn’t even there and she had, yet again, managed to change the rules on him. She wasn’t supposed to be the one that got under his skin; no one should have been able to get under his skin. And yet, there he had been; standing on the platform as he thought about her in the chemicals choking to death on the chemicals. He had been strong enough

( _Crazy enough_ )

to break through the chemicals and come out better version of himself, but he didn’t want to take the chance that she wasn’t strong enough.

He had turned around and quickly made his way to the edge and jumped.

( _He was still a coward, just a different kind_ )


End file.
